What Distant Deeps

What Distant Deeps

BAEN BOOKS by DAVID DRAKE

The RCN Series

With the Lightnings
Lt. Leary, Commanding

The Far Side of the Stars
The Way to Glory

Some Golden Harbor
When the Tide Rises

In the Stormy Red Sky
What Distant Deeps

Hammer’s Slammers

The Tank Lords
Caught in the Crossfire

The Butcher’s Bill
The Sharp End

Paying the Piper

The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, Vol. 1 (omnibus)

The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, Vol. 2 (omnibus)

The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, Vol. 3 (omnibus, forthcoming)

Independent Novels and Collections

The Reaches Trilogy
Seas of Venus

Foreign Legions, edited by David Drake

Ranks of Bronze
The Dragon Lord

Birds of Prey
Northworld Trilogy

Redliners
Starliner

All the Way to the Gallows
Grimmer Than Hell

Other Times Than Peace
Patriots

The General Series

Warlord with S.M. Stirling (omnibus)

Conqueror with S.M. Stirling (omnibus)
 

The Chosen with S.M. Stirling

The Belisarius Series with Eric Flint

An Oblique Approach
In the Heart of Darkness
 

Belisarius I: Thunder at Dawn (omnibus)

Destiny’s Shield
Fortune’s Stroke
 

Belisarius II: Storm at Noontide (omnibus)

The Tide of Victory
The Dance of Time
 

Belisarius III: Flames at Sunset (omnibus)

What Distant Deeps

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by David Drake

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 978-1-4391-3366-8

Cover art by Stephen Hickman

First printing, September 2010

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Drake, David.

 
What distant deeps / David Drake.

      
p. cm.

 
ISBN 978-1-4391-3366-8

 
1. Leary, Daniel (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Mundy, Adele (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Space warfare—Fiction.
 
I. Title.
 

 
PS3554.R196W45 2010

 
813'.54—dc22

                                                           
2010020467

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Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)

Printed in the United States of America

Acknowledgements

Dan Breen continues as my first reader, thank goodness. I give each of my works multiple passes. Despite this, Dan consistently catches things—and sometimes extremely obvious things—which I nonetheless had missed. Besides, he laughs at jokes in my manuscripts that most people are going to miss.

Dorothy Day (under difficult circumstances) and Evan Ladouceur helped enormously with continuity. Such problems as remain are merely a hint of the mess things would be in without them.

Dorothy and my webmaster, Karen Zimmerman, archived my texts in widely separated parts of the country. Only somebody who kills as many computers as I do can appreciate the sense of relief that gives me.

And I’m not sure that anybody else does kill as many computers as I do. This time it was my backup machine, which got rained on and then crushed. My son Jonathan set me up with a new backup, a laptop whose screen my grandson Tristan had broken. (Apparently the computer-slaying gene has skipped a generation.)

Besides archiving texts, Karen (a cybrarian) searched material for me. I now have (for example) several versions of The Ring That Has No End, though none of them is quite what my friend Manly Wade Wellman used to sing with banjo-picker Obray Ramsey in his cabin in the mountains.

The only things that matter in a book are the things that matter to the writer himself. Details of that sort matter very much to me.

My wife Jo took care of me, the house, and the dogs while I wrote. I mentioned that knowing my texts were safe brings a sense of relief. Knowing that my nest is safe is far more important.

My sincere thanks to all those mentioned, and to the many other people who brighten my life by their presence and support.

Author’s Note

I’ll start out with what in my days as a lawyer we would call boilerplate: I use both English and metric weights and measures in the RCN series to suggest the range of diversity which I believe would exist in a galaxy-spanning civilization. I do not, however, expect either actual system to be in use in three thousand years. Kilogram and inch (et cetera) should be taken as translations of future measurement systems, just as I’ve translated the spoken language.

I really wish I didn’t have to say that. I’ve learned that I do.

The situation on which I based the plot of What Distant Deeps is the crisis that overtook but did not—quite—overwhelm the Roman Empire in the third century A.D. The extremities of the empire went through striking (and strikingly different) convulsions. For the action of this novel I’m particularly indebted to what happened in the East, but there is by no means a direct correspondence between this fiction and historical reality (even to the extent that we know the reality).

I write fiction to entertain, not to educate; but Aristophanes proved it was possible to do both, and on a good day a reader might learn something from me as well. Empires have generally used proxies to fight wars on their borders. The problem—as Rome learned with the Oasis of Palmyra—is that the proxies have policies of their own. Not infrequently, things go wrong for the principal when the proxy decides to implement its separate policies.

For a recent example, in the 1970s the US hired a battalion of troops from Argentina, called them “the Contras” and employed them to fight the socialist government of Nicaragua. The military dictatorship running Argentina at the time was more than happy to support the US effort.

Unfortunately for everybody (except ultimately the Argentine people), General Galtieri and his cronies (some of whom, amazingly, were even stupider and more brutal than he was) decided that their secret help to the US meant that the US would protect them from Britain when they invaded the Falklands and subjected the islands’ English-speaking residents to what passed for government in Argentina. Galtieri was wrong—the tail didn’t wag the dog during the Falklands War—and Argentina ousted the military junta as a result of its humiliation by Britain; but there might not have been a Falklands War if the US had not used Argentina as a military proxy in Nicaragua.

I could mention cases where US proxy involvements have led to even worse results. If the shoe fits, wear it.

Finally, a word about the dedication. I could simply let it stand (I’ve many times dedicated a book to an editor or publisher), but there’s an aspect to this one that won’t be obvious to anyone outside my head (including Jason and Jeremy).

I came back to the World in 1971 and began writing the Hammer stories as a way of dealing with my experiences in Viet Nam and Cambodia. The stories were successful, but they made me a pariah to a number of very vocal people.

Jason took me aback when he approached me about putting the series in limited-edition hardcovers. Nobody had ever suggested the stories were worthy of that before. Indeed, the people who said anything were likely to be protesting them being in print at all, even in mass market editions.

When I opened the box that contained the beautifully produced Complete Hammer’s Slammers, Volume 1, I had an unexpected emotional reaction: I’d finally come home to the America which sent me to Nam in 1970. It was something that I didn’t know I’d been missing until Night Shade Books gave it to me.

—
Dave Drake

david-drake.com

In what distant deeps or skies

Burned the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

—
The Tyger
 
William Blake

CHAPTER 1

The Bantry Estate, Cinnabar

“Come and join, Squire Daniel!” called a dancer as she whirled past. “I’m not partnered!”

Daniel vaguely recalled the face, but he knew he must be thinking about an older sister. Ten years ago, he’d left Bantry to enter the Republic of Cinnabar Naval Academy. This girl was no more than sixteen, though she was undoubtedly well developed.
 

Mind, he didn’t recall the sister’s name either.
 

Steen—Old Steen since the death of his father, who’d been tenant-in-chief before him—elbowed Daniel in the ribs and said, “Haw! Not just a dance she’s offering you, Squire! Going to take her up on it? You always did in the old days!”

Steen’s wife was hovering nearby, though she hadn’t presumed to enter the group of men centered on Daniel and the cask of beer on the sea wall. Foiles, the commodore of the fishing fleet, and Higgenson, the manager of the estate’s processing plant, were from Bantry, like Steen, but also present were the owners of three nearby estates who had come to the festivities. Waldmiller of Ponds was over seventy and Broma of Flattler’s Creek wasn’t much younger; but at twenty-five, Peterleigh of Boltway Manor was a year Daniel’s junior.

Before Daniel could pass off the comment with a grin and a shake of his head, Mistress Steen clipped her husband over the ear with a hand well used to hoeing. Fortunately Steen hadn’t gotten his earthenware mug to his lips, so he merely jerked the last of his ale over his bright purple shirt instead of losing his front teeth.

“Where’s your manners, you drunken old fool?” Mistress Steen demanded in a voice that started loud and gained volume. “Can’t you see Lady Miranda close enough to spit on? You embarrass yourself and you embarrass the Squire!”

Daniel caught Mistress Steen’s hands in his own, partly to forestall the full-armed follow-up stroke she was on the verge of delivering. “Now, Roby!” he said. “My Miranda’s a sensible woman who wouldn’t take note of a joke at a celebration, or even—”

He bussed Mistress Steen on the cheek. It was like kissing a boot.

“—this!” he concluded, stepping away.

“Oh, Squire!” Mistress Steen gasped in a mixture of delight and embarrassment. She put her hand to her cheek as though to caress the memory.

“Oh, you do go on!” she said as she stumped off, seemingly half-dazed. Daniel thought he heard her titter when the piping paused.

The original piper, gay in a green vest with blue and gold tassels, was snoring in a drunken stupor behind the bench. His son—who couldn’t have been more than twelve—was making a manful effort to replace him. All the will in the world couldn’t increase the boy’s lung capacity.

Daniel’s eyes touched Miranda, who was with her mother Madeline a good twenty yards away—Roby Steen had been exaggerating. She waved with a merry smile, then went back to describing the stitching of her bodice to more women than Daniel could easily count.

The wives of the neighboring landowners were there, but Bantry tenants made up most of the not-quite-crush. The tenants observed protocol in who got to drink with Daniel, but their wives and daughters weren’t going to give way to outsiders from other estates at their first chance to meet the Squire’s lady.

“A pretty one, Leary,” Peterleigh said. “Your fiancée, is she?”

Daniel cleared his throat. “Ah, Miranda and I have an understanding,” he said, hoping that his embarrassment didn’t show. “There’s nothing formal at this moment, you’ll understand, until, ah, some matters have been worked out.”

Miranda herself never raised the question. She was an extremely smart woman, smart enough to know that others would prod Daniel regularly.

“For the gods’ sakes, boy,” Waldmiller said with a scowl at Peterleigh. “If you weren’t raised to have manners, then at least you could show enough sense to avoid poking your nose in Speaker Leary’s affairs, couldn’t you?”

Peterleigh could probably buy and sell Waldmiller several times over, but seniority and the words themselves jerked the younger man into a brace. “Sorry, Leary, sorry!” he said. “Don’t know what I was thinking, asking about a fellow’s private affairs. Must’ve drunk too much! My apologies!”

Bringing up Daniel’s strained relationship with his father was calling in heavier artillery than Peterleigh deserved, but the young man could have avoided the rebuke by being more polite. Corder Leary was one of the most powerful members of the Senate—and certainly the most feared member. He hadn’t visited Bantry since Daniel’s mother died, and Peterleigh—who was both young and parochial—had obviously forgotten who the estate’s real owner was.